Road to Formula 1

He was born on 29 October 1998 in Montreal. His father gave him his first kart for his fifth birthday. As a junior he was part of the Ferrari Driver Academy, which he left before joining Williams. In 2014, his very first season in single-seaters, he won Italian Formula 4; early in 2015 he won the Toyota Racing Series in New Zealand, and he finished the 2015 European Formula 3 season fifth with one win. On 26 November 2015 Williams announced that he had joined its young driver programme: in 2016 he worked with the team as a development driver and from August ran a separate test programme in a 2014 car.

He spent his second season in European Formula 3 with Prema and sealed the title on 2 October 2016 at Imola, four weeks before his 18th birthday; over the year he took 14 wins and as many poles. Soon after his birthday Williams announced him as a race driver for the 2017 season — before he had finished school or passed his driving test.

Williams: debut and first podium

He made his World Championship debut for Williams at the Australian Grand Prix on 26 March 2017, starting 20th and retiring with brake failure. His first points came at his home Canadian Grand Prix on 11 June 2017 with ninth place. Two weeks later, on 25 June 2017 in Baku, after a red flag and restarts, he was running second, but Valtteri Bottas beat him to the line by a tenth of a second. Third place at 18 years and 239 days made him the youngest rookie on the podium in the championship’s history.

At the Italian Grand Prix on 3 September 2017 he started second: he had set the fourth-fastest time in wet qualifying the day before, and both Red Bull drivers took grid penalties. At 18, Stroll became the youngest driver in the championship’s history to start from the front row; he finished the race seventh. His best result in the rest of the season was sixth at the Mexican Grand Prix on 29 October 2017. Williams spent 2018 at the back of the field: Stroll’s best finishes were eighth in Baku on 29 April and ninth at Monza on 2 September 2018.

Racing Point

In August 2018 a consortium led by his father, Lawrence Stroll, bought Force India out of administration: from the 2018 Belgian Grand Prix the team raced as Racing Point Force India, and from the 2019 season as Racing Point. Lance joined it for 2019; his first race was the Australian Grand Prix on 17 March 2019, where he finished ninth. On 28 July 2019, at the wet German Grand Prix, the team switched him to slicks from 15th place earlier than his rivals, and he briefly took the lead before finishing fourth.

In 2020 he started third and finished fourth at the Hungarian Grand Prix on 19 July, and on 6 September at Monza, after a red flag and a restart, he made the podium in third place. He missed the Eifel Grand Prix on 11 October 2020 through illness, with Nico Hülkenberg standing in; Stroll later said that he had tested positive for COVID-19.

At the Turkish Grand Prix on 15 November 2020 he started from pole — the first of his career, won the day before in wet qualifying in Istanbul, and the first for a Canadian driver since 1997. He led for 32 laps in the race but dropped to ninth because of front wing problems. On 6 December 2020 he finished third at the Sakhir Grand Prix: his team-mate Sergio Pérez won, and Esteban Ocon was second.

Aston Martin

Since 2021 the team has been called Aston Martin. Its first race under that name was the Bahrain Grand Prix on 28 March 2021, where he finished 10th. His best results in the first two seasons under the new name were sixth places at the Qatar Grand Prix on 21 November 2021 and the Singapore Grand Prix on 2 October 2022.

Since 2023 his team-mate has been Fernando Alonso. On 18 February 2023 he broke both wrists and a toe while cycling in Spain, had surgery on his right wrist two days later and missed pre-season testing, yet on 5 March 2023 he lined up eighth for the Bahrain Grand Prix and finished sixth. On 2 April 2023 he was fourth in Melbourne, on 5 November 2023 he started third and finished fifth in São Paulo, and on 18 November 2023 in Las Vegas he climbed from 19th to fifth.

He finished sixth at the Australian Grand Prix two years running — on 24 March 2024 and 16 March 2025. On 31 May 2025, after qualifying in Barcelona, he withdrew from the Spanish Grand Prix with pain in his hand and wrist — an after-effect of his 2023 injury — and underwent treatment; he returned for his home Canadian Grand Prix on 15 June 2025. He then finished seventh three times: at Silverstone on 6 July, the Hungaroring on 3 August and Zandvoort on 31 August 2025 — the last of them from 19th on the grid.

2026 season

2026 is the first season of Aston Martin’s works partnership with Honda, and the AMR26 is the team’s first car designed under Adrian Newey; his team-mate is still Fernando Alonso, for the fourth season in a row. The championship runs to new technical regulations with new power units and active aerodynamics. He opened the season at the Australian Grand Prix on 8 March 2026 with 17th place after starting 22nd. On 3 May 2026 he finished 17th again in Miami. On 26 July 2026 he was 13th at the Hungarian Grand Prix, and he did not finish the Spanish Grand Prix at the new Madrid circuit on 13 September 2026.